EFFECTS INDUCED BY TRANSIT-TIME ON A COUPLED 2-ELEMENT OPTICAL BISTABLE DEVICE

In this paper, we study the effects of finite transit time, i.e., delay, on dynamics in a coupled two-element optical bistable device. Here finite transit time is considered because of signal propagation between the elements. It is shown that delay can be used as a measure of crosstalk between the coupled elements and it will increase the "lethargy time." Thus, many interesting, transient phenomena take place both in hysteresis and pitchfork (symmetry-breaking) regimes. Symmetry-recovering crisis originating from the collision between the unstable periodic orbit and chaotic asymmetrical solution is predicated to occur for T almost-equal-to-tau (T: transit time, tau: response time of nonlinear medium). It is shown that symmetry-recovering crisis results in switching failure in set-reset (S-R) flip-flop operations with pitchfork bifurcation structure.